Finding Cat and Dog Spray

You can simply scan your home and find cat and dog spraying locations by using a quality blacklight in a darkened room. Under fluorescent blacklight, cat spray glows. Your cat or dog may be spraying in many locations that you are unaware of. This will allow you to neutralize lingering odors and limit serious cat urine damage.

First, know what you are looking for. Most cat spraying involves one or more splats on a vertical surface at approximately nose height of the spraying cat, to attact the attention of other cats.

Second, get a good fluorescent blacklight, the type with a cylindrical tube as a light source. Don't use an incandescant-style bulb, the ultraviolet spectrum output is too weak to be useful. Smaller tubes and small battery-powered units are much more difficult to use since they must be very close to the urine to see anything. The best units use a bulb type "BLB" which has higher low wavelength UV output, best for showing cat urine. The effectiveness of newer UV LED flashlights varies greatly. Many will not illuminate urine as well as advertised.To recognize spray spots, look for an obvious "splat and drip" spray pattern (left). Depending upon the surface, cat urine spray can be faint and hard to distinguish from other organic substances and objects that also glow under black light. Spraying on some fabrics may be hard to see. You may need to place a barrier, such as cardboard, in front of difficult surfaces to allow cat spray patterns to be more easily detectable and monitored. When scanning entire rooms for cats look at about 6 to 12" height above the floor around the perimeter of the room, including doors and windows/windowsills, blinds, and on all furniture.